After months of waiting, patient finally snags medical records

Saturday’s Houston Advocate column addressed the dilemma of Bonnie Grant, a resident of The Woodlands in her 70s with Ménière’s disease — an inner ear disorder – who has been unable to retrieve her medical records from the office of her deceased physician.

Dr. Soraya Hoover, who ran a solo practice in Houston, died in January.

After weeks of trying to negotiate a resolution, the patient and her daughter, Tiffany Grant, finally received a copy of the file on Monday afternoon from Hoover’s sister, who is in Houston for a few days.

The sister lives in Canada. The physician’s estate remains in probate.

The Grants paid $25 for copies of the file.

“There’s no way to verify if it’s everything in the records, but it was 31 pages which seems about right,” Tiffany Grant said, adding that the doctor’s sister was planning to head back to Ottawa on Thursday. “This whole thing has been such an unbelievable nightmare for months.”

The dutiful daughter also received a letter from the Texas Medical Board over the weekend, in response to a complaint about the records debacle.

“It just seems crazy to me that there’s a correct procedure for what happens to those records when people are alive and suddenly there isn’t. That makes no sense to me,” Tiffany Grant said.